Osama Bin Laden Poster From FBI Doesn’t Even Mention 9/11

January 21, 2011

The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list of course includes Osama bin Laden, but it doesn’t say he’s wanted for murdering several thousand New Yorkers on 9/11. What gives? Why the pussyfooting around such an obvious fact?

And we know that Al Qaeda chieftain bin Laden long ago claimed responsibility for 9/11 — and that there’s no real reason to doubt it. This curious FBI poster has raised questions for years — feeding the conspiracy theories that somehow the U.S. government was in on it. The Washington Post‘s Dan Eggen noted in 2006:

The absence has also provided fodder for conspiracy theorists who think the U.S. government or another power was behind the Sept. 11 hijackings. From this point of view, the lack of a Sept. 11 reference suggests that the connection to al-Qaeda is uncertain.

Exhaustive government and independent investigations have concluded otherwise, of course, and bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders have proudly taken responsibility for the hijackings. FBI officials say the wanted poster merely reflects the government’s long-standing practice of relying on actual criminal charges in the notices.

“There’s no mystery here,” said FBI spokesman Rex Tomb. “They could add 9/11 on there, but they have not because they don’t need to at this point. . . . There is a logic to it.”

The logic escapes us. Along with bin Laden. By the way, he’s described as tall, left-handed and using a cane.